Following a presentation on recommendations to improve drainage affecting Salce Park at the February 22 Village Council meeting, the mayor was instructed to implement the plan with SSCAFCA concurrence.

Salce Park is near the western end of Sagebrush Drive.

The project will use about $400,000 offered by the authority to address drainage concerns involving the flood-prone soccer fields designated when the Sagebrush Subdivision was approved.

Village Administrator John Avila showed a map of the “Salce Park Basin” with depictions of easement acquisitions needed and areas where earth-moving will be required to control and pond storm water.

He said the joint powers agreement between the Village and SSCAFCA call for engineering designs for how the funds will be used. The map shows how drainage from Calle de Blas, Sagebrush and Rayo del Sol will be controlled.

All of that can be done with the authority’s allocation, Avila said. But the Village will have to supply funds to purchase and install park and playground improvements, he cautioned.

Last September, the Village Council unanimously approved a joint powers agreement with SSCAFCA to improve Salce Park and related storm water run-off concerns. 

The Village and the flood control authority had been at loggerheads for more than a year over what commitments the Village would have to make to solve drainage problems along upper Sagebrush Drive and Camino Rayo del Sol. 

That terrain is watershed that drains toward Salce Park and eventually on to the Corrales Main Canal.

At issue was what Corrales would have to agree to do to receive SSCAFCA funds.

As prelude to the offer of those funds, SSCAFCA spent $50,000 on a drainage plan for the area which Village officials were stunned to learn called for spending $6.5 million, nearly all from Village coffers.

Village officials were not, and are still not, about to agree to implement such a plan. So over the past year, the tricky part of signing an agreement was how to acknowledge the existence of the plan without committing the Village to implement it.

Councillors apparently thought they achieved that at their September 14 meeting with advice from Village Attorney John Appel and former Village Councillor Jim Fahey who was elected to the SSCAFCA board of directors in November.

Fahey reported on recent SSCAFCA meetings at that time, assuring the Village Council would be allowed to spend the $400,000 as it sees fit as long as it includes Salce Park storm water issues.

The municipal park is along the upper end of Sagebrush Drive, dedicated for soccer fields at the time the subdivision was approved. Developer Ed Paschich installed the soccer fields, but within days of completion, a faulty dam on the Corrales-Rio Rancho escarpment sent torrents of stormwater run-off and silt coursing into Corrales, essentially destroying the park.

Several years ago, at Village officials’ request, SSCAFCA agreed to pay for a study for a project that would rehabilitate the park and solve ongoing drainage problems in that area.

A draft joint powers agreement offered last summer seemed to clear away the disputes.